Emmett Mullin Captures UKIPT Galway Title and €100,000

Emmett Mullin from Omagh in Northern Ireland has beaten a field of 698 at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Galway to take down the first UKIPT trophy of 2012 and the cool €100,000 that comes with it.

The final table took just five hours to drop from the nine who made Day 4 to the last man standing. An aggressive eight made up the official final line-up (Joris Ruijs, the Day 1a chip leader, falling in 9th) featuring the two time UKIPT champion Nick Abou Risk, who wasn’t to make it a triple but exited in 7th place, winning €14,700.

Although London-based Joe Roberts started the day strongly, he finished 3rd (€51,900) meaning heads up play was an all-Irish affair. Emmett Mullin and Ronan Gilligan started play one-on-one with almost equal stacks.

A level passed with the advantage sliding over to Ronan Gilligan, before one huge hand turned the tables and gave Mullin the momentum (and the stack) to finish the tournament off. Ronan Gilligan went home as the runner up with €73,650 in prize money - that’s his second close-but-no-cigar moment on the tour: Gilligan finished 2nd at UKIPT Dublin in 2010 for €43,400.

The UKIPT Galway €770 Main Event ran from the 16th-20th February, generating a prizepool of €473,945. Click here for full player lists and gallery. There were 81 places paid – click here for all in-the-money finishing positions and payouts.

With the first leg of the 2012 UKIPT done and dusted, qualification gets underway in earnest to the Nottingham Main Event (April 12th-16th) to be held at Dusk Till Dawn (Mullin has already qualified): 

Side Event winners and riders:

High roller

€300 side event

€100 18/02/12

€130 Charity event

 €160 Bounty

 6 Max €110 15/02/12

€110 turbo Freeezeout 16/02/12